Faculty member view on Provost comments at student rally

I am a professor who listened to the Provost's remarks at the student rally protesting course cuts at the University of Auckland on Thursday afternoon, August 22. Unfortunately, I think a lot of what she said was misleading, incomplete, or both at once.

Students let the Provost speak first, and she began by rolling out the idea that the "course rationalisation" was "faculty-led." This is just not right. Us faculty are just as confused about what is going on as you students are.

In my faculty and at least several others, this "rationalisation" exercise was dropped on us from on high, from out the blue, two weeks ago (August 7 or thereabouts).

Our heads of school/department told us, in summary:

A bunch of our 3rd and 4th-year courses were in-scope for potential elimination We had to provide, on short notice (often 24-48 hours), recommendations and responses about what to cut, what not to cut, and why. (Other options including merging courses, teaching them in alternate years, etc.) No target was given in terms of number of courses to cut, or the number of classroom hours to save for the (apparently drastic) timetabling problems. We were told that, if departments/schools did not make recommendations for cuts, these decisions would be made for us by higher-ups. The word going around was that this required a Covid-level rapidity of response, i.e., an emergency. No real explanation was given for why exactly courses had to be cut, many of which have been running for decades and have been successfully timetabled every year. It was something about classroom space. No real explanation was given for why exactly this was such an emergency, and why the emergency was now. All we heard was that the changes to the curriculum had to be decided and approved by October, so that they could get approval through CUAP (the Committee on University Academic Programmes, which has to approve changes to tertiary qualifications/degrees/majors etc.). All of this immediately blew up whatever we were planning to do that week, and the next -- and it is still going on of course -- as we all scrambled to figure out what to do, whether to try to compromise to limit the damage to the academic quality of our degrees, and/or to try to get this emergency process paused so that real discussions, consultation, decisions, and planning could happen carefully and responsibly.

Another negative consequence is that faculty members were suddenly stuck debating their colleagues and friends over the relative value and importance of their courses and even fields of study, as long-term stable arrangements were suddenly up for grabs. This encouraged "every man for himself"-type thinking and potentially nasty debates, although thankfully, much of this has been avoided by the widespread recognition that the real problem is coming from above.

In contrast to what the Provost said, none of this looks like a process that is "faculty-led" (Provost's words), or aimed at preserving the "comprehensive education" (Provost's words) that a top world institution like the University of Auckland is supposed to offer. It looks like a scramble to try to fix some big upcoming problem that was only recently noticed.

Although neither the Provost who spoke today, nor any other communications from the University leadership, have managed to state this clearly, the impression that faculty have been given from their leadership is that what actually happened is the following:

The Curriculum Framework Transformation (CFT) includes two brand new course requirements that will be required for all first-year students to take, as of 2026. One is termed Waipapa Taumata Rau, or WTR, where each Faculty will teach its own version, and one is a Transdisciplinary (TD) course, a number of which faculty are developing on different topics. Requiring that 2 of the 8 course slots be filled by these courses for all first-year students, and apparently furthermore requiring that these courses have in-person discussion sections, is what has completely jammed up the room timetabling for 2026. They just don't have enough rooms. And, critically, apparently this was recognised only recently, when someone ran modelling or preliminary timetabling. This is what then caused the "panic button" to be hit, and the emergency course cuts. Given that the CFT has been going for years, this seems like a pretty big failure at the leadership and planning level, and now students and faculty are being asked to pay for it.

The University Senate seems to have never been told that these new courses would have these radical downstream consequences, and of course never had a discussion of these consequences, nor a vote to approve such. This also suggests that this key part of CFT planning was perhaps done idealistically, without serious consideration of the the practical downsides, or the tradeoffs between adding first year required courses that are of necessity very generic, broad-brush generalist courses, but then cutting small, specialist, advanced courses from the final years of student degrees.

Many faculty raised the question: you are asking us to be flexible -- merging courses, teaching courses in alternate years, teaching them outside of the normal term, etc. -- why has no thought been given to doing this with the CFT courses, or some part of the CFT courses? The "capstone" courses, yet another "big picture/societal issues" paper offered the the 3rd year of many degrees, could also be considered in the mix for rationalisation. Also, if classroom space has been maxed out, and (say) 10% more space is needed, surely we could explore offering some sections in the evenings, on Saturdays, online, etc.? The word we got back was that these suggestions had been repeatedly made to leadership, and had all been rejected.

Another option could be that CFT course requirement(s) could be made more flexible. Is it really absolutely essential that all students take them in Year 1? Students have diverse goals and diverse plans. Would it really be a big deal if some students took CFT courses in Year 2 or Year 3, especially if it helped them fit in the core classes they need for their desired major or double-major? Also rejected.

(Senate members say they had no idea that the TD course in particular would be a first-year requirement; many apparently envisioned it as a later-stage paper, which would make a lot of sense, as the TD courses are each focused on a societal/practical problem (e.g. climate change), and you are only likely to become good at finding solutions once you have some understanding of the fundamentals.)

The Provost today repeatedly suggested that this was all "routine", that departments/programmes routinely review their offerings as new courses are added and older courses are sometimes retired due to duplication, staffing, student numbers, etc. All that happened this year, she says, is that the leadership and Deans happened to agree to do an accelerated and cross-university version of this routine exercise. To paraphrase, "nothing to see here, folks."

I have yet to find a faculty member who thinks this holds water. The current exercise, with its emergency nature, the "we will do it for you if you don't" threats from above, the lack of guidance about exactly what the problem is and therefore what counts as a solution (we don't even know how many courses/room hours of savings we need to achieve by sacrificing upper-level classes), and especially the lack of forewarning at Senate or elsewhere, all has created a head-slapping, hair-tearing-out experience that seems unprecedented rather than routine.

Speaking of Senate -- the Provost, and other recent University communications, have made it seem like the special meeting of University Senate which has been called for Tuesday August 27 is a routine part of the consultation and approvals process for these curriculum changes. What actually happened is this:

On Monday, July 29, there was a regularly scheduled meeting of Senate. However, this meeting was short, the VC was not in attendance, and there was not a whiff of the course-cutting edict which was to come down a mere week later.

Once the faculty realised that we were being asked to cut courses and otherwise alter the (already accredited) curriculum on short notice, without consultation or discussion, and without a Senate vote, they began asking for a special meeting of Senate. This began with a formal request on Tuesday August 13. The response from leadership was less than rapid, and only after repeated requests was a meeting finally scheduled and announced on Wednesday August 21, scheduled for Tuesday August 27, which is unfortunately (a) after the University Council meeting on Monday August 26, and (b) on midterm break when many faculty will be away on pre-scheduled travel to conferences and research projects. I suspect that faculty attendance will nevertheless be decent, given the stakes, but we could have had a Senate meeting already, and provided answers to the students and media as well as faculty. Actually, the maximally above-board scenario would have been for University leadership itself to call a special Senate meeting as soon as this problem hit their radar, so that we could discuss options and their strengths and weaknesses.

Apparently what happened instead is that the leadership decision was to brazen their way through, and get the cuts made, fast, before opposition could organize. If no Senate meeting had been called, the schedule that had been demanded was such that all of this would have been done and dusted by the next regularly-scheduled Senate meeting.

Some of what I have written above is guesswork, but it represents a widespread understanding among faculty at the moment. If there are errors, I hope and encourage that they be corrected by those "in the know" as soon as possible. My defence is that we faculty are doing the best we can, given the severe lack of detailed information, consultation, and logic in the statements we have heard so far.

(For logic problems, consider: the Provost said both "this is not about class sizes", and "small courses are up for review" (both are my paraphrases). Students themselves detected the internal conflict and expressed their sceptism this afternoon. Another example: a common statement made for why we have to make these changes is to increase "relational teaching". "Relational" seems to be one of the new trendy buzzwords, I have asked various people using the term what it means, and the practicals of it seem to boil down to (a) small class sizes, allowing (b) discussions between students and instructors. A cynic might observe that seminar discussions and the like have been a mainstay of advanced university education for centuries. But regardless, if relational teaching is the goal, how in the world does putting the smaller, upper-level courses on the chopping block help achieve this?)

What should happen now? I think leadership needs to take a step back and reconsider their approach here. It seems like they are not really doing thorough consultation and thorough listening, instead they are barrelling down a predetermined track and seem unconcerned about what gets damaged the service of this "transformation." The immediate need is to hit the pause button, so that students, faculty, staff and leadership all have the time to have the right discussions and make better decisions in a collaborative, rather than emergency, framework.

I hope this has been helpful to students in providing some context, from a faculty member's point of view, on recent events and on the Provost's comments.